News about Daniel Ellsberg

The idea of Project Retro was simple: 1,000 huge rockets, normally used to launch nuclear weapons and spacecraft, would generate so much thrust that Earth's rotation would briefly pause. This would mean that Soviet nuclear missiles would overshoot the missile bases they were aimed at.

PETER HITCHENS: Julian Assange (right) must not be extradited to the United States because doing so would shame our nation. If in doubt, they should consider Daniel Ellsberg (left), who has just died, in a very similar situation. When Mr Ellsberg emerged from documents revealing the untrue truth about the Vietnam War, he was shocked, hounded, and hauled on trial. President Richard Nixon used the legislation to silence and punish him. Ellsberg, a long-served hero of liberty, died. Nixon died of indignation and disgrace.

Since discovering how top US officials had deceived the country in 1971, the ex-military analyst was once dubbed 'the most dangerous man in America.' Ellsberg, a one-time hawk on Vietnam, revealed that Pentagon officials had mistakenly been compiling a 7,000-page study. The classified memo contained a level of US involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967, but it was not revealed at the time.